Rise and Rise Again
by Cauchy
Summary: A mother's love can drive her to terrible lengths. Albus Dumbledore recognized what it was that protected little Harry Potter at first glance. But even the darkest magic can be used for good. Albus, of all people, knew that, and so he let it be.
1. Chapter 1

The house was on fire, and nobody had noticed.

In the air hung the cloying scent of smoke and ash. Timbers creaked and grumbled as they were immolated, their insides giving out and sending burning white fragments flying. Inside, over the crackle of the fire and the rumbling of falling beams, a child's desperate wails could be heard.

On the street, a harried woman with grocery bags slung all along both arms passed within inches of a lick of flame and felt nothing. Had she been a little more curious and perceptive, she might have wondered why the night air was so hot in late October, or why the pavement seemed to dance with lights that came from nowhere.

But she was wondering about tomorrow's tea and whether she should call her estranged brother, despite it having been years since she had had a single thought for him. The muggle-repelling charm remained, miraculously, still intact. She walked on.

Behind her, there was a pop of displaced air and a handsome young man with a long mane of shaggy, dark hair appeared out of nowhere. A moment later, his horrified visage and cloaked body had disappeared from sight. But the woman was not looking anyway.

Sirius Black stared, slack-jawed, at the conflagration for several very long seconds. He had a right to be shocked, for nothing about the situation would have made any sense to him at all. Then he seemed to regain his senses and whipped his wand out of his pocket, running into the house and shouting, "Aguamenti! Aguamenti!"

Water spilled out in a flood around him, fuelled by his desperation, but it had little effect. The fire sprang up eagerly to consume the liquid, and Sirius Black found himself engulfed in a cloud of steam. "Damn it. Damn it all! Aguamenti! James? Lily?"

At this point, Albus Dumbledore woke up from his deep sleep as if from a dream, despite having taken a potion for dreamless sleep. But the dream did not end. It was loud and involved many curses of the furious sort, and the sizzling of flames as they met torrents of water.

Albus's eyes widened and he toppled out of his bed as he turned to the mirror surface of his modified foe-glass. It showed the target of the enemy instead of the enemy itself, and right now it was showing a very detailed, very fiery rendition of that house in Godric's Hollow, or at least, what remained of it.

Transfiguring his nightgown into a woollen outdoor robe, Albus stuck his hand into the jar of floo powder and tossed nearly an entire fistful into the fireplace, heedless of the spray of clear crystals that scattered across the floor at his inelegant motion. Taking a step into the roaring green flames, he called out, "The Hog's Head" and disappeared in a whirlwind of sparks.

As soon as he was spat out of the fireplace, he disapparated with nary a sound, before appearing in the very spot Sirius Black had occupied but minutes ago. The sound of the fire was deafening, and the sight blinding. Albus cast a protective spell on his eyes and then a bubble-head charm for safe breathing.

Then he transfigured. Vanishing spell after vanishing spell was shot at the fire; one could not vanish the flames themselves, but the air that sustained them was fair game. In short order, the house had been put out.

Sirius Black shot out of the front door.

"Professor Dumbledore—thank Merlin you're here! Lily and James," he choked up, and shook his head.

"Show me," Albus said, injecting much urgency into his tone. This seemed to rouse Sirius from his horror and the young man nodded.

Upon entering the house, Albus spotted the body of James Potter. It was half crushed with debris, and the sight made him wince. Surveying the smouldering timbers dubiously, he raised his wand and drew it in a wide arc. The room restored itself to order before his eyes. Even James's body returned to a more pristine state—the state it had been in at the moment of death. Undoubtedly, he had been struck by the killing curse.

Young Sirius Black suddenly burst into tears.

"Wait," Albus murmured, glancing up at the newly repaired staircase. He thought he heard something more than Sirius's wails. Could Tom still be here? His grip on the Elder Wand tightened.

The sound came from the second upstairs room on the left. Albus wasted no time in traversing the stairs and throwing open the door.

The roof was missing, and scorch marks still pockmarked the walls. Albus frowned. His repairing spell had easily been powerful enough to restore the entire house, at least temporarily. A great amount of magic must have been discharged in this room to disrupt his spell. Something had happened here. Something undoubtedly dark.

A high-pitched cry drew his attention to the cot at the centre of the room. Albus hurried over. A little boy with black hair lay there, bawling his eyes out. It was the infant Harry Potter. But where was Lily?

Harry Potter lowered his little fists and turned his head around to gaze up at Albus, and suddenly he knew what had happened.

A bit above Harry's right eye was a livid wound, red and inflamed but not bleeding, in the shape of the common representation of a lightning bolt. Albus did not care much what it looked like—the wound was oozing tainted magic, pulsing like a beacon. And to what, Albus had a fairly good idea.

His wand was in his hand, a detection spell on his lips. The last spells that had been cast in this room: two killing curses. Killing curses did not leave wounds. His eyes trailed the path of the residues. He found a particularly deep scorch mark.

"Lily," he murmured, turning back to the sniffling baby, "What have you done?"

Lowering his wand, Albus stepped forward slowly, closer to the cot. Harry was looking at him now, no longer crying, but curious. Gritting his teeth at the unsettling sensation of pressure that struck him every few seconds, a by-product of the strong dark magic, he cast a diagnostic spell at the boy.

Albus relaxed slightly. Harry was unharmed, but for the cursed mark on his forehead. And there was nothing he could do about that.

Although, perhaps not absolutely nothing. Albus raised his wand again, narrowing his gaze at the unnatural cut.

"Show yourself," he murmured, waving his wand to give off a slight discharge of magic. A faint spark crackled in the air before disappearing. Harry reached an arm up curiously.

Albus looked all around the room, but found no sign of what he searched for. For a moment, he felt doubt, but he crushed it down. He did not often guess wrongly, and it would not do to second-guess himself at such a time.

"Show yourself, demon," he commanded more firmly.

There was a loud caw with a distinctly mocking tone to it, and a large crow barrelled through the shattered window.

"Aw! Aw!" it cried, shedding an abnormal volume of black feathers with a violent flap of its wings before it settled down on the railing of the cot, cocking is head to peer curiously at Albus.

Its eyes were a burning red, like fire.

Albus gave a heavy sigh as his fears were confirmed. Still, he supposed, as he glanced back down at the burnt gouges in the flooring, things could have been worse.

If, ten minutes ago, someone had told Albus that he would be face to face with a demon and be able to reassure himself that there were worse things, he would have laughed, patted the person gently on the shoulder and offered him a sherbet lemon.

"What was the deal you made?" Albus asked, addressing the crow. It cawed again, as if chortling at him. "I see. It's none of my business, is it?"

Albus sighed again. He reached into his pocket slowly. The demon did not seem even remotely alarmed; Albus supposed it could sense his intentions. He brought out a little sack. Peering inside, he saw that it was nearly empty. He repressed the urge to sigh another time. He really ought not to act so morose, whatever he felt. It impacted everyone else's disposition.

He popped a sweet into his mouth before he took out the last one and held his hand out to the crow demon.

"Sherbet lemon?" he inquired.

* * *

Author's Note: I've been ridiculously blocked up on my main fic, so here's something else to chew on... The Kuroshitsuji content is only going off of the first season of the anime. In that respect, the story is AU in both worlds. So Ciel has been consumed.


	2. Chapter 2

Young Sirius Black had entrusted Harry Potter into Albus's care with the declaration that he was going after, "That rat bastard," referring to Peter Pettigrew, the ill-chosen secret keeper. Albus agreed that Sirius, having once been Peter's close friend, would be well-suited to tracking him down.

Albus had not foreseen, alas, that Sirius would do something utterly stupid, drastic, and horrible, however, on the order of committing mass murder in the middle of a muggle street. Had he been granted with such discernment, he never would have allowed the rash boy out of his sight. Hindsight did nothing but embroil him in regret, however, and Albus turned to thoughts of the future.

It was only this afternoon that Albus expected Sirius to come back and take little Harry into his care or at least find some other accommodation. For the moment, the boy had been left with Rubeus Hagrid, whom Albus trusted to see to all the child's needs, at least temporarily. Albus was thankful that the demon, at least, had made itself scarce. That was one less problem to worry about.

Sirius's arrest had muddled everything up. Rubeus certainly could not raise Harry Potter—there would be a public outcry, and that was certainly something Albus wanted to avoid. The Ministry would declare Rubeus unfit because of his ancestry and immediately place Harry with a more "proper" family. With the likes of the Malfoys still unscathed in reputation by the fall of Lord Voldemort, Albus could not risk that.

The only thing the Ministry would not be able to interfere with was an indisputable family connection, like an aunt or uncle. Sirius himself would have passed inspection, as he was related to Harry through his great-aunt and officially the boy's godfather, but he was now an unlikely option, as the chances of acquittal seemed slim.

Albus's thoughts drifted to Lily's muggle relatives. Hesitating for a moment, he told himself that he would have Minerva take a look at them before he any kind of decision, but he knew in the back of his mind that this option would be the best one. He simply did not have time to worry overly much, especially not when such a convenient possibility had presented itself.

Everything was perfect. Even if they were muggles, the Ministry could do nothing to dispute their fitness to care for a magical child; otherwise, all muggle-borns would have to be taken into account as well, and nobody would be willing to undertake such a delicate and controversial operation. Harry would be able to grow up without the possibly corrupting influence of too much fame.

Albus did not at all like the way the wizarding world seemed to have put the child on a pedestal overnight, all because of unsubstantiated rumour. The exact circumstances of Voldemort's disappearance were known by no one but himself, and he certainly had said nothing on the matter of Harry Potter. People seemed to think, however, that his survival meant that he secretly contained some great power. It would be best for Harry to grow up away from all that.

Relieved that a feasible course of action had presented itself so neatly, Albus grasped the golden chain around his neck, fished out his Time Turner, and in a moment was on his way back to that very morning.

~o~

When Albus arrived at the reported scene of the crime, he discovered that he was already minutes too late. The area was swarming with Aurors, and the scorched ground littered with debris and gore. In the middle of it all was Sirius Black, a wild, anguished look on his face, laughing and laughing in sheer horror.

Feeling the pain of hopelessness twist tightly in his chest, Albus turned away and disapparated, knowing that he could do nothing more. Meddling with time was a tricky operation at best, and the very fact that he had received such detailed news had destroyed any chance he could have of saving Sirius Black from himself. It was one of those necessary paradoxes. Albus had nonetheless still felt the need to see it with his own eyes, to feel that familiar anguish so that he would never forget this failure, one more on top of his countless mistakes, because nothing he did was ever enough—one more count of damnation.

~o~

The moment Minerva disapparated and Rubeus flew away on his borrowed bike—borrowed from Sirius Black just that morning, and how painful it was to _know_—a laughing chorus of caws sounded behind Albus and a veritable army of crows descended on the roof of Number Four, Privet Drive.

Slowly, tiredly, Albus turned to the little basket on the doorstep and was unsurprised to see the largest crow of them all perched on the rim, gazing at him with smouldering eyes. "You will not harm him," Albus told it, watching it intently. It rasped at him softly in reply.

Albus narrowed his eyes as he fought to understand the being before him. It spoke in a choppy dialect of crow that was a step from unintelligible to someone who had grown up with honest birdsong, but, master of a dozen magical languages as he was, Albus got the gist of the message.

"You could not harm him if you wished," he repeated for confirmation, contemplating. At last, he decided that the demon had told him the truth. The fact that Harry Potter lived on was a testament to it. There were few beings that could survive a killing curse, and a demon, the darkest of creatures, was one of them.

With one last, morose look at baby Harry on the doorstep, Albus nodded to the crow demon and turned away, walking across the pristine lawn to the edge of the blood wards he had placed. Dark magic, the lot of it, but who was he to oppose the power of a mother's love—the power that had even vanquished Lord Voldemort, at least temporarily?

He only wished that great power did not inevitably exact so high a price.

At the border of the property, Albus whistled peculiarly. A flash of fire surrounded him, bringing with it the soothing trill of a phoenix.

"Aaaw!" squawked the crow, surprised. But then it chortled again. "Aw, aw."

"I do hope you have a pleasant evening too," Albus called back. What a thing for a demon to say—"have a nice day." All threats and compliments acknowledged by both parties, Albus turned away and let the world be engulfed in a warm flame.

Allowing himself a genuine smile at the comforting and familiar sight of his office and its cluttered desk. Depositing Fawkes on his perch, Albus collapsed into his chair, feeling the exhaustion creeping into his bones. He was not as young anymore as he liked to think he was, alas.

Fawkes whistled reassuringly at him, returning some of the strength that had been drained from him. Curling his fingers around his wand again, Albus frowned with concern at the ease with which the crow demon had affected his magic. What would happen to a defenceless young wizard in such conditions?

But the demon would not harm Harry, or so it had said. Albus liked to think he had enough faith in Lily to believe she had covered the finer points of the bargain. The crow had been close-beaked about it, but Albus could surmise that Lily had offered her soul in return for her son's protection. Just how far that protection extended remained to be seen, however.

As it was, the blood wards would see to it that no Death Eaters made it into the vicinity of young Harry as long as he continued to spend time in close proximity to another of his blood, in this case, his aunt. Shameful as he was of his feelings, Albus was glad that things seemed to have worked out, despite the many unexpected losses he had faced.

And if worst came to worst, the wards would protect Harry from the demon who, for now, watched over him. Blood wards were powerful magic, and required a hefty sacrifice. But with Lily's death, there had been sacrifice aplenty, and it would have been a pointless waste not to make use of the opportunity.

Albus frowned heavily at the turn of his own thoughts. Since when had he thought of his people, his friends, as if their lives and deaths were mere objects to him? They were not. He cared deeply for them—they were his loved ones, in absence of his own blood (Aberforth still wanted nothing to do with him past business, and Albus respected his wishes). For Lily and James, for Sirius, Albus grieved deeply.

Yet, Albus was still not their equal, but a greater being. It was not arrogance that spoke, but truth. Albus was far more knowledgeable, powerful, and skilful than any member of his Order. He could boast something like that simply on account of age, his century that he had put, mostly, to good and studious use. He felt more like a teacher or a grandfather to them than a peer, and though he feared giving himself too much power, he craved it nonetheless. It was his secret shame; he battled it every waking moment, and sometimes even succumbed to it while he slept.

Perhaps a bit of contact with the darkest of dark creatures had done him some good. It had called out to the worst of him, and had therefore made him more aware of the desires he had attempted to suppress. Now that he had been forced to think on himself, he could only feel a little more disappointed, a little more crushed under the weight of his life's failings.

~o~

Not entirely assured that young Harry Potter would be all right and certainly not one to rely steadfastly on a single, fixed plan, Albus decided that he had the perfect thing to satisfy both himself and the distraught woman slumped in the chair before him, nursing a gin and surrounded by cats. She was desperate, and she had lost everything in a night. First her poor brother to dragon pox, and then her home and livelihood to the Ministry of Magic. The public attitude toward squibs infuriated him, but there was little Albus could do to change it when he was busy with a thousand other things and thirty-six hour days, wearing out his poor Time Turner, were still not enough for him to get everything done.

"Calm yourself, Arabella," he said soothingly, "I'll arrange everything. You'll have a house and a place in the muggle world within the week."

The squib lifted her head and stared at him in incomprehension. "How?"

Buying a house, of all things, was certainly going to cut into his funds, but with three paying jobs and his only real personal expense his monthly monetary gift to his brother (for the benefit of his own conscience and, he suspected, to Aberforth's unabashed disgust), it would not place a great burden on him.

"As I said, you needn't worry. There is one simple thing I need you to help me with." Albus hated saying these words, hated seeing the flash of trepidation across her face; if he could, he would give Arabella a place to live and a comfortable rest of her life with no strings attached, but alas, he simply could not afford to be so selfless.

Albus hated himself sometimes. Actually, he hated himself at almost all times.

"Harry Potter is living with his muggle relatives, you see, and I'd like you to keep an eye on him if you can. Nothing out of your way, of course, perhaps just a look every once in awhile," he told her, trying his best not to give her the wrong idea. Arabella relaxed noticeably, and Albus felt slightly better that she did not find the task overly burdensome.

"Of course I can do that. Thank you so much, Albus." Her voice was hoarse from crying and drinking, and all the more heartbreaking for it. Albus nodded at her, finding his composure somewhat ruffled after a taxing day. He had already been up for twenty of his usual twenty-four waking hours, and the troublesome cries of cauldron manufacturers calling for less stringent regulations on bottom thickness had occupied a great fraction of his mental resources.

Everybody knew that the minimum thickness was already pushing the reasonable limits of safety, and he shuddered to think what kind of damage his fellow, more near-sighted politicians might do to the health of the country if he looked away for but a moment in distraction. He needed to either crush his opponents' arguments, perhaps by launching some kind of public awareness campaign about the importance of regulations on cauldron thickness, or draft up some kind of compromise that would keep everyone at bay for the moment.

Glancing up at Arabella, he was reminded that now was not the time to be worrying about work. "For now, is this inn to your liking? I'll make certain your stay is paid for, of course."

"Oh, you don't need to. I mean, thank you. You've done so much already. I still have enough for this," Arabella protested, speaking very quickly. Albus shook his head.

"No, it's the least I can do," he said firmly. It would take some stress off the poor woman, and if he could do some simple good for even a moment he would take the opportunity. It would never be enough, but at least it was something.

~o~

Albus was infinitely glad that he had decided to install Arabella Figg in Harry Potter's neighbourhood. The woman had gone far beyond his expectations and had quickly become a teatime acquaintance of Harry's Aunt and acquired the privilege of being young Harry's babysitter whenever the Dursleys wanted nothing to do with him, which, alas, was rather often.

It was not particularly surprising to Albus that Arabella had not reported about anything remotely strange. Demons were painfully easy to find when one searched for them, but could hide directly under the nose of an ignorant person with impunity.

Instead, Albus learned that Harry was an ordinary baby and the Dursleys an ordinary family, if one that was somewhat reluctant to take care of its fourth member. Arabella had assured him that Harry at least seemed to be reasonably well-fed and well-adjusted, and that she had taken to teaching him the letters of the alphabet whenever he came around.

Albus supposed that Arabella considered him a surrogate son, and he was glad that Harry would have someone to care for him. It was painfully obvious, even to him, that the Dursleys did not much like Harry, but it was also clear that the blood wards were functioning, and no Death Eaters would be able to get their hands on the boy.

As for the demon, Albus had taken the liberty of returning to Privet Drive to cast revealing spells everywhere, and had concluded that the demon was perfectly content with ignoring its charge entirely, as long as Harry remained out of danger. This policy relieved Albus, and he decided to pay the entire matter no more mind.

Newspapers from every corner of the magical world were stacked on his desk for him to review, and owls with complaints and demands crowded his window at all hours. The cauldron lobbyists had made way for the even greater and more annoying threat of the Swirlpo industry, which was launching a new, specious campaign about why relaxing with their Swirly Potion was a good idea for Hogwarts students and had, as a side effect, flooded his office with insistent notes from outraged parents that he do something drastic about it immediately. And then there was the great mess of rounding up the remaining Death Eaters and putting them all to trial.

Albus sighed, kneading his forehead tiredly. He had too many things to worry about.

* * *

A/N: Sheesh, late and lame update. You guys give me such an awesome response and this is what I do? I'm sorry. But huge thanks to everybody who has read, reviewed, favorited, or followed.

I do want to clear some things up here, for those of you who actually read these notes. Apologies to those of you who want to see any huge changes to the Harry Potter storyline; this is a subtle AU for Harry Potter, and it is completely from Albus Dumbledore's perspective. You can assume that almost all of Harry Potter's experiences match up to canon. I wanted to do something different from my other story, which is totally AU. That said, there will be more involvement from Kuroshitsuji characters soon.

Also, I apologize in advance if I fail to capture Dumbledore's character. After HBP and DH I really saw him as a perpetually tortured soul trying to contribute something to the world to atone for his past failings, and whose greatest enemy is himself.


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